8.  We can reason about Particulars; and the immediate object of all our reasonings is nothing but particular ideas.

Having here had occasion to speak of syllogism in general, and the use of it in reasoning, and the improvement of our knowledge, it is fit, before I leave this subject, to take notice of one manifest mistake in the rules of syllogism:  viz. that no syllogistical reasoning can be right and conclusive, but what has at least one general proposition in it.  As if we could not reason, and have knowledge about particulars:  whereas, in truth, the matter rightly considered, the immediate object of all our reasoning and knowledge, is nothing but particulars.  Every man’s reasoning and knowledge is only about the ideas existing in his own mind; which are truly, every one of them, particular existences:  and our knowledge and reason about other things, is only as they correspond with those our particular ideas.  So that the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our particular ideas, is the whole and utmost of all our knowledge.  Universality is but accidental to it, and consists only in this, that the particular ideas about which it is are such as more than one particular, thing can correspond with and be represented by.  But the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our particular ideas, and consequently our knowledge, is equally clear and certain, whether either, or both, or neither of those ideas, be capable of representing more real beings than one, or no.

9.  Our Reason often fails us.

Reason, though it penetrates into the depths of the sea and earth, elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast spaces and large rooms of this mighty fabric, yet it comes far short of the real extent of even corporeal being.  And there are many instances wherein it fails us:  as,

First, In cases when we have no Ideas.

I. It perfectly fails us, where our ideas fail.  It neither does nor can extend itself further than they do.  And therefore, wherever we have no ideas, our reasoning stops, and we are at an end of our reckoning:  and if at any time we reason about words which do not stand for any ideas, it is only about those sounds, and nothing else.

10.  Secondly, Because our Ideas are often obscure or imperfect.

II.  Our reason is often puzzled and at a loss, because of the obscurity, confusion, or imperfection of the ideas it is employed about; and there we are involved in difficulties and contradictions.  Thus, not having any perfect idea of the least extension of matter, nor of infinity, we are at a loss about the divisibility of matter; but having perfect, clear, and distinct ideas of number, our reason meets with none of those inextricable difficulties in numbers, nor finds itself involved in any contradictions about them.  Thus, we having but imperfect ideas of the operations of our minds, and of the beginning of motion, or thought how the mind produces either of them in us, and much imperfecter yet of the operation of God, run into great difficulties about free created agents, which reason cannot well extricate itself out of.